LINGUIST List 9.186

Sat Feb 7 1998

Calls: 2nd Flexible Hypertext WS, ESSLLI'98 (Final)

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Please do not use abbreviations or acronyms for your conference unless
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The 2nd International Flexible Hypertext Workshop:
Standards and Evaluation
Held in Conjunction with
the 7th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW7)
Brisbane, Australia --- 14 April 1998
http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/conf/flexht98/
Workshop Theme:
With the explosion of information on the World Wide Web comes the need
to provide more flexible mechanisms for delivering information to the
user. That is, we require mechanisms which can modify documents
on-the-fly in order to take the user's needs into account. Static
hypertext documents suffer from an inability to be all things to all
people; document and multimedia authors must write multiple documents
for different users rather than a single document which can
dynamically modify its content in order to address a particular user's
knowledge or the context of delivery.
This workshop is intended as an inter-disciplinary exploration into
flexible hypertext systems. Flexible hypertext systems are systems
which can present different users with different views of the same
hypertext network, or which can dynamically create the hypertext
network and the content of the documents at the nodes of that network
at run-time. This workshop aims to draw together a number of research
groups taking different approaches to flexible hypertext systems, in
order to promote the cross-fertilisation of ideas and highlight the
prospects for future collaboration. The target research areas include
(but are not limited to):
- Information retrieval and filtering: the use of information
retrieval or other techniques to determine the relevance of the nodes
within a static hypertext network for the individual user. That is,
the content of the documents remain static, but links to other
documents are flexible.
- Adaptive hypertext: the adaptation of an existing hypertext network
of documents to a model of the user. That is, providing flexible
document content and flexible views of a static hypertext network.
- Dynamic hypertext: employing text generation or other techniques to
dynamically create both the hypertext network and the documents within
the network as the user requests them. The hypertext network does not
exist in any form; it is built dynamically.
Some related events which have been held in the past include:
- Flexible Hypertext Workshop, held at the the Eighth ACM
International Hypertext Conference (Hypertext'97).
(http://www.mri.mq.edu.au/~mariam/flexht/)
- Intelligent educational systems on the World-Wide Web, held in
conjunction with the 8th World Conference on Artificial Intelligence
in Education (AI-ED97).
(http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~plb/AIED97_workshop/)
- Workshop on Adaptive Systems and User Modeling on the World Wide
Web, held in conjunction with the Sixth International Conference on
User Modeling (UM'97). (http://zaphod.cs.uni-sb.de/~UM97/ws5.html)
- Workshop on User Modelling for Information Filtering on the World
Wide Web, held in conjunction with the Fifth International Conference
on User Modeling (UM'96).
(http://www.cs.su.oz.au/~bob/um96-workshop.html)
- Workshop on Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia held in conjunction
with the Fourth International Conference on User Modeling (UM'94).
(http://www.education.uts.edu.au/projects/ah/AH-94.html)
More information about adaptive hypertext systems can be found at
http://www.education.uts.edu.au/projects/ah/
Workshop Focus:
There has been a significant amount of research in this area over the
past five years (see workshop theme for more information), but two
recurring issues have become increasingly important, and these will be
the focus of this workshop:
- Standards: With the increasing popularity of the world wide web and
the growing market for flexible document delivery systems, we need to
develop standards for these systems in order to encourage and
facilitate their use more widely on the world wide web. In order to
develop such standards it is first important to more clearly define
the requirements for such systems: what does it mean for a system to
be a flexible, adaptive or dynamic hypertext system? Following on from
these requirements, which techniques are important in flexible
hypertext systems? Finally, can we design a standard architecture for
flexible hypertext systems which can be re-used widely?
- Evaluation: One of the key issues which arose from the first
flexible hypertext workshop and which has been aired again recently on
the adaptive hypertext mailing list is the importance of the
evaluation of flexible hypertext systems. In particular, since the
main goal of these systems is to maximise the suitability of a
document to the user's knowledge and needs, evaluation is an essential
aspect in the development of these systems. However, very little
research has been done which confirms the advantages of such systems
or which demonstrates how this might be done.
Workshop Format:
The workshop will run for one full day on 14 April. The number of
attendees will be limited to 20 in order to encourage participation in
workshop discussions. Participation will be on the basis of submitted
position papers or by invitation. The workshop will include a limited
number of paper presentations and general group discussions. Group
discussions will focus on the issues raised in the position papers, as
well as on some focus questions. A workshop dinner will also be
organised to encourage informal discussion.
The programme will include:
Welcome and Introduction
Workshop Sessions consisting of:
1 to 2 Position Paper Presentations (15-30 minutes), and
Group Discussion on the Issues Raised (30-60 minutes)
Closing:
Planning for post-workshop activities
Conclusions and Wrap-up
Workshop Dinner
The proceedings will be compiled into a technical report after the
workshop.
Position Papers:
We invite position papers describing demonstrated techniques for
improving the flexibility of hypertext documents. We are particularly
interested in papers which present innovative solutions to providing
flexible hypertext documents, and those which address the need for
building standard architectures and evaluation techniques for such
systems. We are also interested in receiving papers assessing the
benefits and downfalls of providing flexible documents, and papers of
a more speculative nature which focus on the future of flexible
hypertext systems. Those aspects of the paper which are important for
discussion in the workshop should be clearly outlined in the paper.
Papers should be 3-5 pages long, and should be put up on the Web. If
you don't have access to a web server, then some space will be
allocated for you.
Electronic submission of the URL address of the position paper will be
preferred, although papers submitted as ascii (html) or postscript
will be accepted. To submit a position paper, send the URL address and
an ascii version of the paper itself to: mariammpce.mq.edu.au
If this is not possible, please send hard copies to:
Maria Milosavljevic
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences
Locked Bag 17
North Ryde
NSW 2113
Australia
Important Dates:
27 February 1998: Submission of position papers
13 March 1998: Notification of acceptance or rejection
27 March 1998: Camera-ready copies due
Before the workshop, all attendees will be able to access the position
papers from the web. We strongly encourage attendees to read these
before the workshop.
Programme Committee:
Maria Milosavljevic (Chair), Macquarie University, Australia.
Peter Brusilovsky, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
Robert Dale, Macquarie University, Australia.
Paul De Bra, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Kristina Hook, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden.
Judy Kay, University of Sydney, Australia.
Jon Oberlander, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Cecile Paris, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Australia.
Julita Vassileva, University of Saskatchewan, Canada
For More Information:
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Maria Milosavljevic
MRI Language Technology Group
Macquarie University
Sydney NSW 2113
Australia
email: mariammpce.mq.edu.au
Tel: (+61 2) 9850 6345
Fax: (+61 2) 9850 9529

ESSLLI-98 Workshop on RECENT ADVANCES IN CORPUS ANNOTATION
August 17 - 21, 1998
A workshop held as part of the 10th European Summer School in Logic,
Language and Information (ESSLLI-98)
August 17 - 28, 1998
Saarbrueken, Germany
** FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS **
ORGANIZERS: Hans Uszkoreit, Brigitte Krenn, Wojciech Skut, Thorsten
Brants (Department of Computational Linguistics, University of the
Saarland)
Web site: http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~esslli98/workshops.html
BACKGROUND:
The use of statistical methods and particularly training from
annotated corpora has become an important topic in various fields in
computational linguistics. Currently available corpus resources are
rather small except for English, and largely restricted to the
annotation of parts-of-speech and phrase structure.
The workshop is intended to bring together researchers who create
reusable annotation schemes, annotation tools, and corpora for
different languages and kinds of language, representing information
such as morphology, syntax, semantics, dialoge structure, etc.
Papers should address some of the following topics:
- reusable and extendable annotation schemes,
- efficient annotation of large corpora,
- current work on annotation tools,
- interaction of human annotators and automatic annotation tools,
- representation of competence and performance information within
annotated corpora,
- other related topics.
Presentations of annotation schemes and corpora for various languages
are encouraged, as well as demonstrations of implemented annotation
tools.
WORKSHOP FORMAT: The workshop will consist of five sessions of 90
minutes each held over five days. There will be either two or three
presentations at each session with time for questions and discussion.
SUBMISSIONS:
All researchers in the field, but especially Ph.D. students and young
researchers, are encouraged to submit extended abstracts (6 pages,
12pt) preferably by e-mail and in postscript.
On an extra page, the following information should be included:
1. Name, affiliation, address, e-mail of the submitter(s).
2. An indication which of the themes is/are addressed.
3. An abstract of the paper.
4. If applicable, requirements for a demo.
E-mail submissions shall be sent to krenncoli.uni-sb.de. Hard copies
shall be sent to:
Brigitte Krenn
Universitaet des Saarlandes
Computerlinguistik
Postfach 1150
66041 Saarbruecken
Germany
The deadline for submissions is February 15, 1998. Authors will be
notified of acceptance by April 15, 1998. Final copy for inclusion in
the informal workshop proceedings is due May 15, 1998.
REGISTRATION: Workshop contributors will be required to register for
ESSLLI-98, but they will be elligible for a reduced registration fee.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Feb 15, 98: Deadline for submissions
Apr 15, 98: Notification of acceptance
May 15, 98: Deadline for final copy
Aug 24, 98: Start of workshop
FURTHER INFORMATION:
To obtain further information about ESSLLI-98 please visit the
ESSLLI-98 home page at http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/esslli